Pages

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Bill Maher to Right-Wing Christians: If You Do God's Work, Why Are You Always Wrong?

"Is the problem that you can't follow instructions, or is Jesus just dicking you around?" Maher asks.

October 13, 2012 |

On
Friday's episode of "Real Time with Bill Maher," Maher wondered why
conservative Christians who claim to do God's work always manage to
screw up so badly. "If you're doing God's work and God is perfect, how
come you're always wrong?" he wonders. "Is the problem that you can't
follow instructions, or is Jesus just dicking you around?"

Maher revisits a 2008 letter sent out by Focus on the Family
detailing the horrors that would befall the nation if Barack Obama won
the Presidency. As Maher points out, not a single one of the group's 34
dire predictions came to pass: school children still say the Pledge of Allegiance and the government has not seized everyone's guns.

Maher admits that Focus in the Family is in the business of scaring
"rubes" into giving them money, so the truth is not their highest
priority. "But 0 for 34?" he asks in disbelief. Watch Maher eviscerate
the right-wing group below.

A documented case of false prophecy: Four years later, ‘Letter from 2012′ makes Focus on the Family look ridiculous

Before the 2008 election, the religious right was predicting doom, gloom and the end of the world if Barack Obama were to win.
One
of the most colorful and intense denunciations of Obama came from Focus
on the Family, which produced a 16-page “Letter From 2012 in Obama’s
America.” I had forgotten all about that dire “letter from the future.”

In
2008, Focus on the Family listed 34 predictions of what would happen if
Barack Obama became president. They were wrong about all 34 of them.

Unfortunately
for Focus, Libby Anne did not forget about it. Since this fictional
“letter” was dated October 2012 — which is now — she dug out a copy to
see how it’s many predictions have held up. The result is a devastating
post titled “This is the most important election of all time! (again)”
Focus on the Family made 34 specific, detailed predictions about what would happen in “Obama’s America.” They came up 0-for-34.
Well,
let’s be generous — we’ll give them half credit for prediction No. 10.
That one correctly foresaw the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” — but
then also incorrectly predicted a host of disastrous consequences of
that repeal. Obama did repeal DADT, but Christians have not
been expelled from the military and the Pentagon isn’t paying “special
bonuses” to LGBT recruits. But still, that one comes closer than the
other 33 predictions, which are all utterly wrong, so let’s cut Focus
some slack and say they’re 0.5-for-34.
The Boy Scouts and
private Christian schools were not forced to disband by the Supreme
Court; adoption agencies remain in business; religious broadcasters
still broadcast; churches are not being compelled to host gay weddings
or to hire lesbian clergy; Christian tribal gatherings are still
permitted “at the pole” in public high schools; the Pledge of Allegiance
and private gun ownership have not been outlawed.
Libby Anne’s
post is long because it is impressively thorough and methodical. Here is
what Focus on the Family said would happen. Here is what actually did
happen instead. Over and over and over. Focus on the Family was wrong.
Focus on the Family was wrong. Focus on the Family was wrong. …
Thirty-four times over. Treat yourself to reading the whole thing.
Re-reading
the Focus letter four years later, what strikes me most — besides how
utterly wrong they are about everything — is how parochial
their imagination is when attempting to envision a political dystopia.
The horrors they predict are almost all narrowly targeted at and
tailored toward them. I’ve read a ton of dystopian stories,
good and bad, and this is the most cluelessly self-absorbed vision of
its kind that I’ve ever seen.
Maybe my favorite part of the letter (here’s a .pdf version)
is prediction No. 18: “Pornographic magazines are openly displayed in
gas stations, grocery stores and on newsstands.” I can’t figure out
which is more laughably wrong — that this is what they imagine is the
real secret agenda of President Obama and his party, or that anyone in
2008 was looking ahead to 2012 and predicting boom times for print
media.Focus Letter

“This is the most important election of all time!” (again)

You’ve
probably heard by now that if Obama wins a second term we will become a
socialist nation, gun ownership will be made illegal, our country will
be unrecognizable by the end of his term, and on and on. If you listen
to leaders on the Right it sounds like this election is the most important election of all time and that all of America’s freedoms are staked Romney defeating Obama. There’s just one problem. I remember 2008.
In 2008 prominent Christian Right group Focus on the Family put out a sixteen page document called “Letter from 2012 in Obama’s America.”
The document was in the form of a letter, a (fictional) letter from a
Christian in 2012 writing back from the future about all the changes
that had happened since Obama took office. Let’s take a look, shall we?
The letter starts like this:

October 22, 2012
Dear friends,
I can hardly sing “The Star Spangled Banner” any more. When I hear the words,
O say, does that star spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
I get tears in my eyes and a lump in my throat. Now in October of 2012,
after seeing what has happened in the last four years, I don’t think I
can still answer, “Yes,” to that question. We are not “the land of the
free and the home of the brave.” Many of our freedoms have been taken
away by a liberal Supreme Court and a Democratic majority in both the
House and the Senate, and hardly any brave citizen dares to resist the
new government policies any more.
The 2008 election was closer
than anybody expected, but Barack Obama still won. Many Christians voted
for Obama – younger evangelicals actually provided him with the needed
margin to defeat John McCain – but they didn’t think he would really
follow through on the farLeft policies that had marked his career.
They were wrong.

In
other words, the purpose of this letter is to scare evangelicals –
especially younger evangelicals – out of voting for Obama and convince
them to vote for McCain. Here are some excerpts regarding the changes
that were supposedly going to happen over the four years following 2008
if Barack Obama was elected (the things that will happen are numbered,
and I have maintained that numbering):

(1) The Boy
Scouts no longer exist as an organization. They chose to disband rather
than be forced to obey the Supreme Court decision that they would have
to hire homosexual scoutmasters and allow them to sleep in tents with
young boys.

That didn’t happen. The Boy Scouts still
discriminate against gay people, and no one is stopping them. They also
discriminate against atheists, which means my eagle scout husband will
not be able to enroll our son Bobby in boy scouts.

(2)
Elementary schools now include compulsory training in varieties of
gender identity in Grade 1, including the goodness of homosexuality as
one possible personal choice. Many parents tried to “opt out” their
children from such sessions, but the courts have ruled they cannot do
this, noting that education experts in the government have decided that
such training is essential to children’s psychological health.

Nope,
actually, schools are still generally unsafe places for LGBTQ youth.
LGBTQ teens are still committing suicide because of the abuse they face,
not just from other students but sometimes even from teachers.

(10)
One change regarding the status of homosexuals did not wait for any
Supreme Court decision. In the first week after his inauguration,
President Obama invited homosexual rights leaders from around the United
States to join him at the White House as he signed an executive order
directing all branches of the military to abandon their “don’t ask,
don’t tell” policy and to start actively recruiting homosexuals.
As
a result, homosexuals are now given special bonuses for enlisting in
military service (to attempt to compensate for past discrimination), and
all new recruits, and all active-duty and reserve personnel, are
compelled to take many hours of “sensitivity training” to ensure they
demonstrate positive attitudes toward those with different sexual
orientations and practices. Any one who seems hesitant or who objects is
routinely passed over for promotion. In addition, any chaplain who
holds to an interpretation of Scripture that homosexual conduct is
morally wrong and therefore does not espouse “mainstream values,” is
dismissed from the military.

This one comes closest
to being true. Obama did repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (though it took him
a while to do so!). But for some reason the author of this letter
couldn’t stop there. Special bonuses for new recruits who are gay?
Anyone who is not 100% pro gay rights is passed over for promotions? Um,
no. That’s not happening. All that changed is that gay soldiers can
now, like, tell people that they’re gay.

(11) High
schools are no longer free to allow “See You at the Pole” meetings where
students pray together, or any student Bible studies even before or
after school.

What? Nope, no one is stopping kids from praying before school and no one is busting up Bible studies.

(15)
Congress lost no time in solidifying abortion rights under President
Obama. In fact, Obama had promised, “The first thing I’ll do as
president is sign the Freedom of Choice Act” (July 17, 2007, speech to
the Planned Parenthood Action Fund). This federal law immediately
nullified hundreds of state laws that had created even the slightest
barrier to abortion. States can no longer require parental involvement
for minors who wish to have an abortion, waiting period, informed
consent rules, restrictions on tax-payer funding or restrictions on
late-term abortions. The act reversed the Hyde Amendment, so the
government now funds Medicaid abortions for any reason. As a result, the
number of abortions has increased dramatically. The Freedom of Choice
Act also reversed the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003, so infants
can be killed outright just seconds before they would be born. States
whose laws were overturned challenged the law in court but it was upheld
by the Obama Supreme Court.

Um, actually, the reality is the exact opposite of this. Between 2008 and 2012 abortion restrictions absolutely ballooned. And the Hyde amendment, prohibiting federal funding for abortion, is still firmly in place.
Also,
I’m curious about the suggestion that lifting restrictions on abortions
would cause the numbers of women having abortions to “increase
dramatically.” If this suggestion is true, it would mean that there are
significant numbers of women out there today who want abortions and end
up being forced to carry their pregnancies to term and become mothers
because they are unable to obtain abortions. I’m sure this is the
reality for some women, but how many? Not for as many as the author of
this letter things, I’m hoping. But regardless, this statement does make
clear the goal of restrictions on abortions – preventing women from
accessing constitutionally protected health care.
Alternatively,
of course, the author may think that if abortion were as easy to get as a
lolly pop, there would be lots of women who are actually okay with the
idea of having a baby who would run out and get on at a moment’s notice
because, I don’t know, they got annoyed at wearing maternity clothes or
something. I remember hearing this attitude as a child, this idea that
women were somehow so empty minded that if abortion was available in the
local drug store, they’d just run in and get one, as if the decision to
have an abortion was something women made lightly and without thought.
On a lark, like.

(18) It’s almost impossible to keep
children from seeing pornography. The Supreme Court in 2011 nullified
all Federal Communications Commission restrictions on obscene speech or
visual content in radio and television broadcasts.

Nope. Didn’t happen.
Also,
how come the Christian Right is against regulations when they apply to
how businesses operate, but all for regulations when it comes to how TV
and radio stations operate? I mean, if the free market is so glorious,
the “magic hand” and all that, why would it not work in the case of TV
and radio? I mean, wouldn’t some channels bill themselves as
obscenity-free just to get viewers, while others would go all whole
hog obscenity to get a different set of viewers, and then everyone would
be happy?

(19) It is illegal for private citizens to
own guns for self-defense in eight states, and the number is growing
with increasing Democratic control of state legislatures and
governorships.

Believe it or not, no one has taken
away your guns and no one will. I have yet to meet a single Democrat who
wants to completely ban private ownership of guns. (Regulating is not
banning. Requiring background checks is not banning. Requiring courses
on gun safety, or whatever else, is not banning. Unless, that is,
requiring drivers licenses = banning cars.) Also, believe it or not,
Obama has not enacted any new gun regulations while in office. NOT ONE.
So yeah, that didn’t happen.

(20) Parents’ freedom to
teach their children at home has been severely restricted. … The Supreme
Court declared that home schooling was a violation of state educational
requirements except in cases where the parents (a) had an education
certificate from an accredited state program., (b) agreed to use
state-approved textbooks in all courses, and (c) agreed not to teach
their children that homosexual conduct is wrong, or that Jesus is the
only way to God, since these ideas have been found to hinder students’
social adjustment and acceptance of other lifestyles and beliefs, and to
run counter to the state’s interest in educating its children to be
good citizens. Parents found in violation of this ruling have been
subject to prosecutions for truancy violation, resulting in heavy fines
and eventual removal of their children from the home. Thousands of home
schooling parents, seeing no alternative in the United States, have
begun to emigrate to other countries, particularly Australia and New
Zealand, where home schooling is still quite prevalent.

Didn’t happen.
Also,
could someone from Australia or New Zealand please explain why your
countries represent the wet dream of homeschoolers? Almost every time
any homeschool advocate discusses the potential regulation of
homeschooling in this country, they follow it with “let’s just all move
to Australia/New Zealand.” Supposedly, there are already American
homeschoolers doing just that. So spill. Do you guys not regulate
homeschooling at all or something?

(21) President
Obama fulfilled his campaign promise and began regular withdrawal of
U.S. troops from Iraq, completing it in the promised 16 months, by April
2010. All was peaceful during those months, but then in May 2010,
Al-Qaida operatives from Syria and Iran poured into Iraq and completely
overwhelmed the Iraqi security forces. A Taliban-like oppression has
taken over in Iraq, and hundreds of thousands of “American sympathizers”
have been labeled as traitors, imprisoned, tortured, and killed. The
number put to death may soon reach the millions.
Al-Qaida leaders
have been emboldened by what they are calling the American “defeat” and
their ranks are swelling in dozens of countries.

(22)
President Obama directed U.S. intelligence services to cease all
wiretapping of alleged terrorist phone calls unless they first obtained a
warrant for each case. Terrorists captured overseas, instead of being
tried in military tribunals, are given full trials in the U.S. court
system, and they have to be allowed access to a number of government
secrets to prepare their defense.
Since 2009, terrorist bombs have
exploded in two large and two small U.S. cities, killing hundreds, and
the entire country is fearful, for no place seems safe.

I’m
wracking my brain, and I’m not coming up with a single Islamic
terrorist attack in this country in the last four years. Well, that one
Muslim psychologist in the U.S. army killed several dozen soldiers on an
army base, I suppose that counts – though it didn’t involve the
“terrorist bombs” predicted. That guy out in Norway killed almost a
hundred people, but he was a right wing extremist and that wasn’t the
U.S. We’ve had plenty of shootings, from Gabrielle Giffords to the guy
in Aurora to the guy who shot up a Sikh temple (because it looked
Muslim, I guess), but those weren’t the Islamic terrorist attacks this
letter suggests. So yeah. Didn’t happen.

(23) In early
2009, [Russia] followed the pattern they had begun in Georgia in 2008
and sent troops to occupy and re-take several Eastern European
countries, starting with the Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
President Obama appealed to the United Nations (UN), taking the same
approach he had in his initial statements when Russia invaded Georgia in
August 2008: “Now is the time for Georgia and Russia to show restraint,
and to avoid an escalation to full scale war,” and “All sides should
enter into direct talks on behalf of stability in Georgia, and the
United States, the United Nations Security Council, and the
international community should fully support a peaceful resolution to
this crisis,”
But Russia sits on the Security Council, and no U.N. action has yet been taken.
Then
in the next three years, Russia occupied additional countries that had
been previous Soviet satellite nations, including Poland, Hungary, the
Czech Republic and Bulgaria, with no military response from the U.S. or
the U.N. NATO heads of state have severely condemned Russia’s actions
each time but they could never reach consensus on military action.

Someone please remind the people at Focus on the Family that the Cold War is over?
Also, didn’t happen.

(25)
In mid-2010, Iran launched a nuclear bomb that exploded in the middle
of Tel Aviv, destroying much of that city. They then demanded that
Israel cede huge amounts of territory to the Palestinians, and after an
anguished all-night Cabinet meeting, Israel’s prime minister agreed.
Israel is reduced to a much smaller country, hardly able to defend
itself, and its future remains uncertain. President Obama said he
abhorred what Iran had done and he hoped the U.N. would unanimously
condemn this crime against humanity. He also declared that the U.S.
would be part of any international peacekeeping force if authorized by
the U.N., but the Muslim nations in the U.N. have so far prevented any
action.

No, Iran has not nuked Israel. What confuses
me about the above scenario is that while Iran is supposedly working on
making nuclear weapons, Israel actually has them, and given historical precedent the idea that Israel would just stand down and cede away its land in this situation seems highly unlikely. (Someone who knows more about the Israel/Iran situation, feel free to offer more information.)

(26)
The new Congress under President Obama passed a nationalized “single
provider” health care system, in which the U.S. government is the
provider of all health care in the United States, following the pattern
of nationalized medicine in the United Kingdom and Canada. The great
benefit is that medical care is now free for everyone — if you can get
it. Now that health care is free, it seems everybody wants more of it.
The waiting list for prostate cancer surgery is 3 years. The waiting
list for ovarian cancer is 2 years. Just as the Canadian experience had
shown prior to 2008 with its nationalized health care, so in the U.S.
only a small number of MRIs are performed — down 90% from 2008 — because
they are too expensive, and they discover more problems that need
treatment, so they are almost never authorized.
(27) Because
medical resources must be rationed carefully by the government, people
older than 80 have essentially no access to hospitals or surgical
procedures. Their “duty” is increasingly thought to be to go home to
die, so they don’t drain scarce resources from the medical system.
Euthanasia is becoming more and more common.

First, this didn’t happen. In fact, when Obama started working on health care reform he didn’t even pitch
a single provider system, let alone pass such a thing. Instead, Obama
passed the Republicans’ own health care plan. And then, bizarrely, the
Republicans threw a fit.
Second, the person who wrote this clearly
knows nothing about how the national health care systems in other
western nations actually work. (If you live in such a country, feel free
to explain the problems with these paragraphs.)

(28)
Many Christians who voted for Obama did so because they thought his tax
policies were fairer and his “middle-class tax cuts” would bring the
economy out of its 2008 crisis. But once he took office, he followed the
consistent pattern of the Democratic Party and his own record and asked
Congress for a large tax increase. He explained the deficit had grown
so large under President Bush, and the needs of the nation were so
great, that we couldn’t afford to cut taxes.

Let’s have a quiz, shall we?

Obama did which of the following while in office:

A. Raise taxes

B. Cut taxes

Answer: B

There, that was fun.

(31)
World demand for oil continues to climb, and prices keep going up, but
President Obama for four years has refused to allow additional drilling
for oil in the United States or offshore. Gas costs more than $7 per
gallon, and many Democrats openly applaud this, since high prices reduce
oil consumption and thus reduce carbon dioxide output. But
working Americans are hit hard by these costs.

Yeah,
that $7 a gallon gas is really hurting my pocketbook. Or not. I will say
that $4 a gallon gas certainly isn’t fun, but $4 isn’t $7.
Also, Obama has opened additional drilling offshore. Yes, you read that right.

(31)
As for coal, President Obama directed the Environmental Protection
Agency to implement strict new carbon emission standards that drove many
coal-powered electric plants out of business. The country has less
total electric power available than in 2008, and periodic blackouts to
conserve energy occur on a regular schedule throughout the nation. The
price of electricity has tripled in places like California, which also
faces rolling blackouts during peak energy periods. The impact on our
economy, and our homes, has been devastating.

I’m sorry, rolling blackouts? What?

(32)
By the summer of 2009, the five-member FCC was controlled by Democratic
appointees – including a chairman appointed by President Obama. The
“Fairness Doctrine” became a topic of FCC consideration following
pressure from Democratic congressional leaders who initially did not
have sufficient votes to pass the measure. The FCC quickly implemented
the “Fairness Doctrine,” which requires that radio stations provide
“equal time” for alternative views on political or policy issues.
As
a result, all radio stations have to provide equal time to contrasting
views for every political or policy-related program they broadcast by
talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, Dennis
Prager, Janet Parshall, Michael Medved and Hugh Hewitt, and
broadcasters like Dr. James Dobson. Every conservative talk show is
followed by an instant rebuttal to the program by a liberal “watchdog”
group. Many listeners gave up in frustration, advertising (and donation)
revenues dropped dramatically, and nearly all conservative stations
have gone out of business or switched to alternative formats such as
country or gospel or other music. Conservative talk radio, for all intents and purposes, was shut down by the end of 2010.

Hang on. I have to stop laughing before I can finish this post.
There. Okay.
How
does the author finish this “letter from 2012 in Obama’s America”?
Well, a letter like this wouldn’t be complete without talk of Christians
in the United States being thrown in jail now, would it?

Many
brave Christian men and women tried to resist these laws, and some
Christian legal agencies tried to defend them, but they couldn’t resist
the power of a 6-3 liberal majority on the Supreme Court. It seems many
of the bravest ones went to jail or were driven to bankruptcy. And many
of their reputations have been destroyed by a relentless press and the
endless repetition of false accusations.

Let’s see.
The Soviet Union rises again? Check. Christians being thrown in jail in
the United States? Check. Just so we’re, you know, being thorough.
And of course, the letter ends with a call to action:

When
did this all start? Christians share a lot of the blame. In 2008, many
evangelicals thought Senator Obama was an opportunity for a “change,”
and they voted for him. They did not realize Obama’s far-Left agenda
would take away many of our freedoms, perhaps permanently (it is
unlikely the Supreme Court can be changed for perhaps 30 years).
Christians did not realize that by electing Barack Obama — rated the
most liberal U.S. senator in 2007 — they would allow the law, in the
hands of a liberal Congress and Supreme Court, to become a great
instrument of oppression.

The whole purpose of this
letter, like I said, was to scare evangelicals out of voting for Obama
at any cost. And today, they’re doing the same thing. If you vote for
Obama, they say, every manner of horrible awful no good very bad thing
will happen. Your freedoms will disappear. They will take your guns,
they will ban homeschooling, they will send your grandma to death
panels.
But this is getting old. See, leaders on the Right do this every election year.
Every election is “the most important election of all time,” and every
election year they warn that our freedoms as Americans are on the line.
Every election year they predict catastrophe if they lose the election.
The day after Obama’s election, a friend facebooked me a simple
question: “Are you ready for four years of hell?” He went on to talk
about Christians being put in jail and socialism coming to America.
Didn’t happen.
It’s like all those times Christian leaders have
predicted Jesus’ return. You can only predict it and then have it not
happen so many times before you lose all credibility whatsoever. It’s as
if the Right is playing a game to see how many times they can predict
the destruction of our freedoms before they get called on it. And
seriously, it’s about time someone called them on it.
And don’t even get me started on the portrayal of liberals as anti-American.